Tuesday, August 4, 2009

The Benefits of Keeping a Journal

If you want to grow, one important thing you should do is keeping a journal. It may seem simple, but it can make a big difference in your life.

I myself have been journaling for years. Writing all the lessons I learn and all the ideas I get has become a habit for me. And to be honest, it’s difficult to imagine how my life would be without it.

Here are some benefits you will get by keeping a journal:

1. It trains you to be observant. Once you make journaling a habit, you will develop the habit of being observant in all your experiences. You will get way more ideas and lessons this way. Instead of paying attention to the negative side of things, you pay attention to the positive side to extract lessons from it. Instead of taking things for granted, you look for new ideas that you can implement.

2. It prevents you from losing an idea. Have you ever gotten an idea only to lose it later because you didn’t write it down? I often experienced that myself. But then I developed the habit of writing down every idea that comes into my mind as soon as possible. If I’m away from my computer, I usually write it down on a piece of paper that I bring wherever I go. I will then transfer the idea to the journal in my computer.

3. It helps you memorize an idea. Even if you do nothing else, the act of writing helps you memorize the idea better. I often remember the things I write down without looking back at my notes.

4. It trains you to express your thoughts. I often take lessons from my experiences and write them down in my journal. Since I want to write a concise statement that summarizes the lesson, I need to think for a while to make it concise. This is a good exercise for me because over time I can express my thoughts better.

5. It helps you expand your ideas. When you try to come up with a sentence to express an idea, you are thinking actively about it. Thinking actively helps you connect your idea to another idea. At the end, you will expand your ideas.

6. It helps you review all the lessons you’ve learned. Why should you repeat the same mistakes you’ve made? By reviewing your journal, you can quickly see the lessons you’ve learned and the ideas you’ve gotten. You can do whatever necessary to avoid repeating the same mistakes. You can use the ideas to propel yourself forward.

7. It allows you to see your progress over time. After keeping a journal for years, you can look back at it and see how far you’ve gone. Things that were big problems in the past might seem small today. The raw ideas you had in the past might have been realized today. Seeing your progress motivates you to move even further ahead.

Now that you have seen the benefits of keeping a journal, what tool should you use?

You don’t need anything complicated for your journal. If your prefer to use a computer, you can use a word processor like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. You can even use a text editor like Notepad. If you prefer not to use computer, you can use a notebook.

Just use whatever tool you feel comfortable with. The important thing is to make journaling a habit.

Have you ever started keeping a journal – perhaps starting on a particular milestone like your birthday, or January 1st – only to give up after a few days or weeks? Like many projects which we’re initially enthusiastic about, writing daily or even weekly in a journal can all too quickly become a chore. After all, what difference can it make to write down words that no-one but you will see?

There are several ways for keeping a journal to change your life,and I’ll show you how to achieve each in just ten minutes a day. Still think it’s not worth it?

1. Your Journal Offers Self-Insight

Do you ever wonder who you really are? Do you have problems which occur again and again – patterns of behaviour that you just can’t break out of? Keeping a journal for an extended period of time lets you learn the truth about yourself: how your motivation waxes and wanes, how many projects you let fizzle out after a brief burst of excitement; what topics you return to again, and again, and again…

Ten-minute exercise:

If you’ve been keeping a journal for a while (even if it’s fallen by the wayside recently), read through some old entries. Do you spot any patterns? Look for strong emotions that occur frequently, such as anger, misery, excitement. You might also take note of recurring problems or difficulties. For example, do entries about lack of sleep coincide with stressful periods such as exams or project deadlines at work?

2. Your Journal Builds the Writing Habit

Are you an aspiring blogger, author, poet, journalist or writer of any description? If you’re making serious attempts at writing, you need to be disciplined about it – no professional writer works just when they’re “in the mood” or when “the muse descends.” Developing the habit of writing regularly (ideally every day) will be a bigger factor in your success than your raw level of writing skill. You will get better if you practice, and your journal is an ideal place to do so – no-one will laugh at clumsy phrases or failed experimental pieces, and you can write about whatever topics inspire you the most.

You can even write about your writing; building the ability to think about how you write will give you insight into your strengths and weaknesses. Being able to explain how and why a piece of your writing worked will let you replicate that achievement in the future.

Ten-minute exercise:

Set aside a period of ten minutes to write a journal entry every day. Even when you don’t think you have anything interesting to say, honour that commitment and write something. Some people are inspired by writing prompts, famous quotations, or simply picking a topic (work, family, health, goals). Even the busiest of us can find ten minutes in the day – set your alarm earlier, if you have to. It’s worth the effort: a hundred and fifty words a day – easily possible in ten minutes – adds up to over fifty thousand words in a year. Once you’ve built up your journaling like this, you’ll find it much easier to work on your other pieces

of writing.

3. Your Journal is a Gift to Your Future Self

Did you keep a journal at any point as a child or teenager? If so, and if you still have it, go back and re-read

some entries: I guarantee that you’ll have a few great laughs and smiles in doing so. There might be references to incidents you’d previously forgotten, or particularly telling phrases or observations. Keeping a journal today means you can look back in five years, ten years or in old age at what you were thinking about, dreaming of, hoping for … it’s the closest you can get to time-travelling back to meet a past version of yourself.

Ten-minute exercise:

EITHER: Pick up one of your old journals and flick through it. What stands out? Are there incidents described that you’d forgotten? Have your views on a particular issue or topic changed radically?

OR: If you’ve never kept a journal in the past, use a page of your current one to write a letter to yourself in the future. Jot down some thoughts about the main strands of your life – are you happy with your job, your relationships, your health and fitness? Write down where you see yourself in a year, and in five years.

4. Your Journal Holds You Accountable

Many people like to record facts and figures in their journal, especially ones which relate to an important life change. Calories consumed, exercise done, cigarettes not smoked, alcohol units drunk … whatever the nature of your change, your journal can help you to achieve it. Seeing your progress in black and white helps you to carry on when your motivation is at rock-bottom, and for some people, the knowledge that they’ll have to record their failures is enough to keep them on the straight-and-narrow.

Ten-minute exercise:

Pick an area of your life where you want to improve: perhaps you want to get up early every day. For the next week, write down how you did each day – it’ll only take a minute or two, and you’ll be able to see if you progress as the week goes on – or if your enthusiasm quickly peters out.

5. Your Journal Encourages Positive Thinking

When you write in your journal, don’t dwell on things that went wrong. Focus on the positive aspects of your day or week – even when you have to dig hard to find something. It might take a while for you to notice the effect, but you’ll soon be seeing faster change in your life: we tend to move towards what we’re focusing on. Time coach Mark Forster advocates writing a daily “What’s better” list, recording the things which were not just good but better – this is a powerful way to focus on growth.

Ten-minute exercise:

If you’re reading this in the evening, how do you feel your day went? (Morning readers – use yesterday.) Chances are, you can think of lots of frustrations, things that went wrong, things that didn’t get done. Get your journal and write “Things which were good today”. List at least five. They don’t have to be big things – something as simple as “I saw a beautiful sunset” or “I left work on time” are fine. Now how do you feel about your day?